


The Spark that Will Light the Fire

by sunkelles



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Gen, Hero Worship, Minor Finnrey, Sister-Sister Relationship, Star Wars: The Last Jedi Spoilers, The Stormtrooper Revolution, Unrequited Crush, fairy tale imagery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2017-12-18
Packaged: 2019-02-16 17:12:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13058493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunkelles/pseuds/sunkelles
Summary: Rose Tico was a stormtrooper. Paige Tico was a sister. Finn is a hero, and then a disappointment, and then maybe a hero again.Oh how heroes fall and then stumble back up again.





	The Spark that Will Light the Fire

**Author's Note:**

> i was very disappointed that there weren't any other stormtroopers shown in tlj who defected and the whole concept was pretty much glossed over if you could say it was addressed at all. 
> 
> i decided that rose being a former stormtrooper actually made a lot of sense narratively and i wanted to explore it. hopefully i did the idea and the character justice

LI-6520 is a stormtrooper. She knows this above all else: that’s all she ever was and all she ever will be. She fixes other people’s engines, figures out the bugs in the systems. LI-6520 does what she’s told. Except when she doesn’t. Then she’s reconditioned. She knows that she doesn’t even realize that it’s happened sometimes, but this time she realizes long after the fact.

The memory comes back in hazy bits and pieces months later. She had tried to stop a captain from beating a younger trooper. It hadn’t gone well, and they’d sent her to reconditioning immediately. Apparently, it didn’t stick. She still has the hazy memories that they were supposed to wipe, and she still has that pesky conscience. LI-6520 does as she’s told, expect for when she knows that it’s _wrong._ She clings to that memory, whenever she feels like she’s completely worthless.

She remembers that she stopped that girl from being hurt. She did something worthwhile in her life.

Then FN-2187 defects, and the First Order is blown right open. Troopers disappear left and right. The officers crack down harder than they ever have. Threats of reconditioning come for the tiniest offenses, from dropping a nail to looking in the direction of an officer.

FN-2187 defected. He fought the First Order. He became a resistance hero. If he could, why can’t I? Why can’t all of us? The atmosphere surrounding the troopers has changed. There’s _hope_ now, something there never was before.

LI-6520 steals a TIE fighter and defects, and she’s never felt more alive in her life.

  


LI-6520 meets Paige Tico two weeks after she left the First Order. She is wearing a ring with the resistance emblem on it, and Rose immediately walks up to her. LI-6520 has known since she left the First Order that she wants to join the resistance, and this is the first opportunity that she’s had. She’s not about to pass that up.

“I want to join the resistance,” LI-6520 says.

“I’m Paige,” the other woman says, smiling softly at her, “what’s your name.”

“I don’t have one,” LI-6520 says.

“What do you mean?” Paige asks.

“I mean I used to be a stormtrooper,” she says softly, “I had a designation- LI-6520.”

“Do you want a name?” Paige asks without skipping a beat.

“Yes,” she says without hesitating.

“You could be Lily,” Paige says, “it starts with LI.”

“No. I don’t want it to have anything to do with that. I want to do be done being a stormtrooper.”

“What about Rose?” Paige asks, “it’s another flower. I really like that name.”

“Rose,” she says, “I think I like that.”

“So,” Paige says, “you want to join the resistance. Do you want to come with me now?”

“Yes,” Rose says, “but I don’t want everyone to know I was a stormtrooper.” She just wants to be normal for once. She doesn’t want to deal with whatever the fallout that comes with that information is.

“You know,” Paige says, looking Rose over, “you could pass as my sister. Would you like that?” Rose feels warm inside. She’s seen a few holovids about sisters, and she would like nothing more than that.

“Yes,” Rose says.

Paige smiles at her and says, "I've always wanted a sister." 

  


Her name is Rose Tico now. No one remembers Paige having a sister, but Paige swears up and down that she’s always had one and that the rest of the officers just didn’t pay enough attention when she talked.

Rose gets a job down in the maintenance department, and she does almost the same thing that she did for the First Order. Except that now she has a name and a sister and she makes money and gets to eat real food that has an actual taste. It might be the same kind of work, but Rose doesn’t think that it’s like that at all.

She and Paige watch holovids and talk about ethics and history and what Paige's home planet, Hays Minor, was like. Rose tells her what being a stormtrooper was like, and how liberating it is not to be one anymore. She tells her about the great stormtrooper retreat, and what FN-2187 meant, how his escape sparked something deep within all of them.

She wonders what FN-2187 would think about it if he were awake. She decides to go to visit him. Rose knows that she doesn’t really _know_ him, but she feels that she does. _Finn_ ignited the stormtrooper retreat. He convinced her to escape and join the rebellion. He might be the bravest person in the galaxy, and that’s including Paige.

After about a week of visiting Finn, Paige decides to tag along with her. Rose always sits in silence when she visits Finn. She and Paige sit in silence for the first three minutes, and then Paige breaks it.

“Have you ever heard the story of sleeping beauty?” Paige asks.

“No,” Rose says. It’s the same response she’s given Paige every time she’s asked her a question that doesn’t involved machine repairs or Imperial history.

“It’s an old story from Hays Minor,” Paige says with a big grin, “a witch put a spell on a beautiful princess so that she would only wake up when she was kissed by her true love. Her true love was a stunning woman, a Jedi knight from a far off land, and when she kissed her, the princess woke up.” Rose doesn’t really get what the point of this story is. Paige bumps Rose with her shoulder.

“He could be your sleeping beauty,” Paige teases. Rose feels her face flush in embarrassment.

“I don’t like him,” Rose says.

“ _Sure_ you don't,” Paige says.

“He doesn’t like me,” Rose counters, because she can see that claiming she doesn’t like him will get her absolutely nowhere.

“But he might like you. You should kiss him, just to find out.”

“PAIGE!” Rose screeches. Paige lets out a peel of laughter so loud they can probably hear her all over the ship.

“Oh little sister, you’re so easy to tease,” Paige says. Then, Rose realizes something. This is what Rose should have had her whole life. She thinks that somewhere, in another world, she was born Paige’s sister and she did. She wishes that was her life, instead of the one where she was raised to fight and kill and thrown aside to repair ships when they realized she wasn’t any good at that.

But this isn’t that world, and Rose is glad that she gets this now. Now, she gets to be Paige Tico’s sister. That has to be enough.

  


They hang out. They visit Finn’s bedside, and Paige teaches her all the ins and outs of the world outside the Order and the resistance itself. Rose thinks that Paige has given her enough just by being her sister, but apparently, Paige doesn’t see it that way. She tells Rose about the necklace that she always wears, and then she takes a matching necklace out of her jacket. 

“My parents gave these to me. They said I should give one to the _other half of my heart._ It would be when I welcomed them into the family by marriage.” Paige rolls her eyes when she says this.

“I told them I wasn’t interested in romance, but they just _insisted._ They insisted that I would find someone. But you know, I think that I did. It’s not the romance that they hoped for, but I think it’s something better.” Then Paige holds out the necklace.

“Welcome to the family, sister.” The necklace means that Paige _really_ considers Rose her sister, that this isn’t just so Rose doesn’t have to explain who she is to the resistance anymore. This is real, and Rose feels the weight of the emotions weighing down on her.

“Paige,” Rose says. There’s a happy sob catching in her throat. Paige pulls the necklace over Rose’s head, and the cold metal sits on her throat, near her collar bone.

“Please,” Paige says, grinning at her, “just take it.” Rose hugs her so tightly that it almost hurts.

“Rose,” Paige squeals, “I can’t- I can’t breath.” Rose loosens her grip a little, but she doesn’t end the hug. Since Paige hugs right back, Rose thinks that she’s alright with it.

  


Paige dies the next day. She tells Rose that they’re sisters, for real, and then she dies. Rose cries every tear that she has to shed.

 

Then, Finn wakes up. Sleeping beauty wakes up without any kisses, and she finds him below deck, near the escape pods. She tries to play it cool. She fails. She fails even worse when she realizes that he’s trying to desert too. The hero of the stormtroopers, trying to leave the resistance in the dust. Rose has never felt sicker in her life. Paige is dead, and the beautiful boy that she has idolized is ready to leave the rest of them for dead. She would rather spit on him than kiss him at this point. She settles for zapping him, and hopes that will make do.

 

Finn sticks around. He even helps her come up with a plan for saving their ships. Poe Dameron sends them on a mission to buy them time, and she goes eagerly. If Finn doesn’t, he doesn’t let it show.

They go to the casino planet Paige has ranted about to her before, the one Paige told her the war racketeers lived on who sold weapons to both sides. She tells Finn about her sister’s experiences growing up, co-opting them as her own. She doesn’t like him much at that moment, and it’s so much easier to shame him by making those experiences hers than to tell the real truth. She doesn’t want him to know that she’s a stormtrooper too, not when she still thought he was this shining pillar of goodness and not now when she knows that he’s a disappointment. Now, Rose sort of just wants to be done with him.

She can’t be done with him, of course. The world isn’t that easy and they still have a job to do. They get onto the First Order ship, and it seems that everything is going according to plan. Then, they’re found out. Rose thinks that this should surprise her more than it does. Things seemed like they were going so well. They found a codebreaker, even though it wasn’t the one they expected. They got off the planet with a ship. But their codebreaker betrayed them, and now they’re both back in the hands of Phasma.

“FN-2187 and LI-6520, what a surprise. Two traitors for the price of one,” Captain Phasma says. Finn gasps, but he doesn’t have long for shock before he’s almost beheaded. And then breaks out. And then fights Phasma in a duel and pushes her off a ledge.

A lot happens, and there isn’t time to talk about Finn’s new revelation until they steal a ship. Then, it seems they have plenty of time to talk about it, time Rose would prefer to spend not talking about it.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were a stormtrooper?” Finn asks.

“Why did you try to desert?” Rose deflects. Finn keeps looking forward, holding the controls. It's good to have a pilot who's paying attention to the sky, but Rose thinks that's only so he can avoid making eye contact. 

“You know Rey? The Jedi?”

“Yeah,” Rose says. She doesn’t think there’s a person in the resistance that hasn’t heard about Rey and her quest to bring back Luke Skywalker. Obviously, she hasn’t been all that successful on that front.

“I wanted to find her and run away,” Finn says, “I just didn’t want to be a stormtrooper anymore, Rose. I wanted to run as far away from the First Order as I could, but then I met Rey. So I came back for her. I never signed up for the Resistance. I just want Rey and I to be safe.” Rose feels a twist in her gut. _This_ might be worse than finding out he wanted to desert. This is knowing the reasons behind it, having to see him as human in his mistakes and understand why he made them.

 

Oh how heroes fall and then stumble back up again.

 

“So,” Finn says, “why didn’t you tell me you were a stormtrooper before. Quid pro quo, Rose, quid pro quo.”  Rose grins sadly at that: stormtrooper code. You give me half your ration, I’ll cover for you the next time you show up late. You kiss me in the fresher and I’ll pretend you mean something to me.

Quid pro quo, Rose, quid pro quo. She sighs, but she decides to acquiesce.

“At the beginning, I didn’t want you to think I was even _more_ of a crazy fangirl,” Rose says, “and then, well, I didn’t want to have anything in common with you.”

“You really don’t like me, do you?” Finn asks.

“I don’t know,” Rose says, “You weren’t the hero I wanted you to be.”

“Heroes never are,” Finn says. Rose doesn’t know how to respond to that.

“There’s an escape pod in here,” Rose says, “you could take it, if you wanted.” She knows why he tried to desert now, and she doesn’t resent him as much for it. If he doesn’t want to be here, she doesn’t want to be the one forcing him to. She knows what it’s like to be forced into something as well as he does, and she doesn’t ever want to be the one doing that, even though she realizes she has been.

“I’m going planetside with you,” Finn says, like it’s somehow obvious.

“But your Jedi isn’t here,” Rose says.

“I”m not running away anymore, Rose,” Finn says, “if I don’t defend this place, Rey won’t have anywhere to find us.” He looks at her seriously, steely determination in his dark brown eyes. There’s something brave about this boy again, a sense of confidence and urgency that she’s hasn’t seen before. For the first time, he seems like the boy she imagined looking over his bedside. Rose feels her stupid heart flutter. She really doesn’t need this now.

Finn opens the door, and then they go to meet their siblings in arms for a final stand.

 

She saves him from his suicidal stunt. Rose doesn’t quite know why she does it. Or maybe she does, but she just doesn’t want to admit it. She wants to fight for people she loves, people like Paige- like Finn- like all the other stormtroopers that are capable of rebelling just like they did. She doesn’t want to let her hatred of the First Order overcome her ability to love. She won’t let them rob her of her humanity again. Not her- not Finn- not all the other troopers who deserve so much better. She won’t let them steal that from anyone ever again. She will not let them steal her humanity again, and she will do her best to help others regain theirs. 

“That’s how we’re gonna win,” Rose says, “not fighting what we hate, saving what we love.” She kisses him, and like reverse sleeping beauty, Rose Tico goes unconscious.

 

 

When Rose awakens, it’s not to lips on hers. Finn, however, is sitting over her bedside. It seems like an interesting turn of fate. Rose can’t help but be a little flattered that he came and a little embarrassed about how long she sat by _his_ bedside.

“I’m so glad you’re alright,” Finn says. Rose tries to sit up, and finds that it hurts her ribs. Finn helps her lie back down.

“You’re gonna be sore for awhile,” Finn says. Rose laughs, and finds that it hurts too. Somehow she finds that funny, and laughs a little more as the pain comes.

“You saved me,” he says.

“Yeah,” she says, “I did. Kissed you too.” Finn grimaces. That's all the answer that Rose needs. 

“You don’t have feelings for me, do you?” Rose asks. Finn doesn’t respond, but she can tell that his silence means no.

“I don’t know if I have them for you either,” Rose admits. At that moment, kissing Finn had seemed like the obvious conclusion. She didn’t know what was going to happen. It was now or never, and in that moment, it truly seemed right. Now she doesn’t know. She still wants to fight to protect people like him, but she doesn’t know what her feelings mean beyond that. She’s just so confused, trying to work out feelings she was never allowed to have or explore back in the Order.

“But you kissed me?” Finn asks.

“I did. But I think- I think I love the idea of you, Finn,” she says, “I don’t think I actually _know_ you well enough to love you. You definitely don’t know me well enough to love me.” The only person who’s ever known her well enough to love her is dead, and Rose is never getting her back.

“I don’t,” Finn admits, “but I’d like to.” It takes Finn a moment to realize the implications of his statement, then he looks terrified. He tries to take it back immediately.

“I mean, I’d like to get to know you,” Finn corrects. He looks awkward and stiff at her bedside. He still doesn’t seem comfortable with the kiss or his accidental implications.

“You love Rey, don’t you?” she asks, “That’s why you wanted to run away with her.”

“Yeah,” Finn says, “I think that I do.” That’s the most that a stormtrooper can say, really. That they think they love someone. They don’t know how to love or be loved. The best thing they have are approximations. Rose thinks that she loved Paige. She thinks that she likes Finn, but she’s so unfamiliar with both of these emotions that she’s not positive. She’s just figuring out how to be a person, and she supposes that it’s the same way with Finn.

She’s not LI-6520 and he’s not FN-2187. They’re people now, Rose and Finn, and they’re still trying to figure out what that means. She thinks that she’s stumbled, but she hasn’t lost her way. That’s the best she can hope for right now. She’s going to get better. She’s going to figure out how to be herself. Rose knows that she can, and she knows that she will. She will help the resistance. She will help the stormtroopers who, like her, want to fight the evils of the Order, or even the ones like Finn who just want to be people again. She will do her best by every person. 

She feels the cool metal necklace on her neck, and feels her resolve solidify. Paige believed in her, and Rose won’t let her down. Rose Tico will be the hero this galaxy needs. 


End file.
